


Gods Don't Die

by XingPanda



Series: Those Who Stand At The Top [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, reverse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 00:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17797721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XingPanda/pseuds/XingPanda
Summary: Donquixote Rosinante was not a good person.1st fic in an au where Rosi didn't stay with the marines and instead went back to Doflamingo at a young age.





	Gods Don't Die

Donquixote Rosinante was not a good person. He may have been at one point and to be fair he certainly wasn’t too horrible as far as nefarious pirates go. 

Unless one knew him well enough to know better, the best that could be said about Rosi was that he was a mixed bag. A little too damaged to be friendly, and so strangely quiet that people had been known to spend hours in a room with him before noticing he was there. But he was also clumsy, oddly sweet to children, and if one was lucky enough to see it he had the most wonderful smile.

People didn’t tend to get that lucky. Or even close enough to see the kind parts of him.

Rosi had a reputation for being cold and standoffish. He didn’t speak, he just stood behind his brother like a shadow. Always there, always watching. Probably watching. It was hard to tell with the purple shades he wore. 

And his face was covered in strange makeup. Bright red lipstick drawn up into a clownish glasgow smile and three dark triangles under his right eye. 

Everything about him seemed designed to put people off, to make them feel ill at ease.

And that was how Rosi liked it. 

He didn’t want anyone to get close. It was always more trouble than it was worth. Rosi liked to think of himself as a hardened man but his heart had always been too big for his body. So he just...locked that shit up. No friends, no one but Doffy was allowed to see behind his carefully constructed mask. 

Only Doffy knew why Rosi was like that and it was none of anyone else’s business, thank you very much. The only other person that Rosi allowed near his walls, not inside them just...near, was the stray they’d picked up a few years back. New members of the Donquixote Family weren’t rare but dying children with a lust for blood generally weren’t the typical recruit. Needless to say, Doffy took one look at Law and decided he was perfect grooming material. Rosi couldn’t care less about raising him but he liked the look in the kid’s eyes. Dead. Just like his brother...and just like Rosi.

Shame the world got him so young but shit happens.

There was something about Law that pulled at the chains around Rosi’s heart. So he added more locks with different and more complicated keys. Yet somehow Law would pull and nag and manage to get through. 

He was an absolute brat with a foul mouth and a penchant for swiping coins off of bodies. And after a while Rosi realized he liked the kid. He’d started thinking of Law kind of like a little brother or a son maybe. He just couldn’t help it. 

And Law liked him too. One time he flipped off Doflamingo and Rosinante honest to god laughed. It changed his whole face. Law hadn’t seen more than a small quirk of the lips from him before that. Before long, Rosi’s face returned to the stoic shape everyone was used to but Law had seen a crack in the wall. And it was endearing. 

Sometimes Law would enter his room and find slightly crumpled issues of  _ Sora, Warrior of the Sea _ placed on his bed. Rosi always managed to trip and mess up the pages but everything was still legible for the most part. Law never thanked him but Rosi didn’t want him to.

He’d tricked himself into thinking that he didn’t  _ really _ care for the kid. Sure he wasn’t as cold to him as he was to others but that was just because Doffy liked him. Rosi trusted his brother’s judgment. Well, except for Trebol but that was a whole other story. 

Rosi wasn’t a good liar. It was one of the reasons he kept quiet all the time, his devil fruit helped with that. If you don’t speak, you can’t fuck up any important missions. So lying to himself was hard but he figured he could keep doing it until Law died.

Rosi never forgot that Law was dying. Doffy wouldn’t let him forget, he’d been on the hunt for the Ope Ope no Mi pretty much since Law joined. And until he found it, there was no way Rosi was going to let himself give in to hope.

It was painful, the kid was dying. Rosi didn’t  _ do _ feelings. He specifically didn’t let himself care about others for this exact reason. People die. It hurt. Rosi didn’t need anymore heartbreak.

And strangely enough...he didn’t get any. It was touch and go for a bit but they found the fruit, stole it cause fuck paying for shit, Law ate it and got better. 

Which as far as Rosi was concerned, was a goddamn miracle. Things didn’t tend to work out this well for the Donquixote brothers but damn, he’d take it.

Law was 15 now and even more of an ass. His skin was still marred with the white blotches from his long gone disease, stark against his dark skin, but he was healthy. He’d recently had a growth spurt which still didn’t discourage Rosi from picking him up and holding him up like a kitten. It only got funnier as Law got older. Especially hilarious now that Law’s voice was changing. Rosi and Doffy got a real kick out of the sudden voice cracks. 

Only they were allowed to make fun of Law, of course. Anyone else who talked shit would find their lives forfeit. Joker and Corazón were kings of the underworld, ruthless pirates who looked after their own, and they weren’t forgiving men. 

Law was special to Rosi. He made him feel...human again. When Rosi was a child he was a god, then the  _ bad things _ happened and made him human. But he didn’t think about that. 

He’d learned to associate the word human with horrible feelings. Law was starting to change that. It was almost nice.

Almost.

Rosi didn’t like himself. And he didn’t like being human. He much preferred to shove any human emotion deep down where no one could find it, not even himself. So the fact that Law continued to break through more each day was annoying at best and fucking infuriating at worst. 

He figured it was only a matter of time before Law wormed his way in fully but Rosi preferred to hold that off for as long as possible. Old habits die hard.

Emotions for Rosi were kind of like smoking. It was definitely something that affected him and he wanted to quit but he just...couldn’t.

Yeah, he knew that bottling it all up wasn’t healthy but at this point in his life Rosi figured that the best thing for his mental health was to not think about it. Sometimes at night he’d wake up in a panic, a scream caught in his throat. He’d be back there, during the bad time. It always took him too long to calm down and realize where he was. At which point it was a toss up for whether he sought out his brother for quiet comfort or sat alone in a bubble without sound for the rest of the night. 

He wished he could say he was getting better but the whole Law thing had honestly only aggravated his PTSD. He wasn’t good with losing people. Law was young, he wasn’t quite powerful yet, he could still be lost. 

And Rosi was always just a little too weak to save people, clumsy boy, stupid silent Rosi. He’d have to get stronger. Like Doffy.

If they were both strong, they could protect Law together. Rosi had already been a monster, he didn’t mind getting worse for Law’s sake. 

Monsters can be killed but Rosi was a god. And gods don’t die.

  
  



End file.
